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Watch: A complete 90-minute video crash course on retouching portraits

When you look at all those beautiful portraits, you may want to start shooting and editing them yourself. But then you realize that it may be more challenging than it seems. Thankfully, portrait retouching is a skill you can learn, and photographer Sean Tucker is on a mission to help you on this creative journey.

Sean has just published a series of six videos that guide you through portrait retouching techniques, tips, and tricks. There is nearly an hour and a half of video material for you to watch, learn, and follow along.

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Five tips to improve your backlit portraits on location

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I don’t know about you, but for me, backlighting a subject – especially on location – is one of the things I love to use and experiment with during portrait sessions. Whether it’s the nice bright clear sun producing a glowy halo or you’re faking it with a strobe, it’s a great way to add some interest and drama into a portrait. They can be very easy to mess up and not get the results you were expecting, though.

In this video, Julia Trotti walks us through her top five tips for shooting backlit portraits using the natural light approach. And as well as talking about the ways to shoot with backlight on location, she also points out some of the pitfalls of using the sun as a backlight and how not to shoot it so you can learn to not mess it up.

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Want to take macro wildlife photos? Start with these five tips

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Macro photography is fun and it opens up a whole new world of creative possibilities. Naturally, the same goes for macro photos of wildlife such as snakes, frogs, spiders, and other tiny creatures roaming the earth.

If you’d like to start photographing the wildlife up close, especially in remote locations, there are a few things to keep in mind. And in this video from B&H, photographer Colby Brown shares with you five tips to help you get started.

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Don’t spend a fortune on backgrounds, here are 3 ideas to make your own

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What do you use for backdrops? If you’re like most tabletop photographers you have probably built up a bit of a backdrop library, but it’s never enough, you always need another one! Perhaps a light-coloured wood effect when you only have dark wood, or a marble effect when you only have granite. It can get expensive.

Well don’t worry, Scott from Tin House Studio is here to show you how to make and repurpose backgrounds for tabletop photography, on a budget.

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Want to be a wildlife photographer? Start here

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I grew up watching wildlife documentaries and David Attenborough was always a favourite in our household. So naturally, when I started my photography journey I fantasised about photographing exotic wildlife in beautiful locations: polar bear cubs in Svalbard, emperor penguins in Antarctica, snow leopards in the Nepalese mountains. Funnily enough all cold-weather locations but maybe it’s just because we are currently in a heatwave!

Getting started in wildlife photography can seem daunting at first, but it really doesn’t have to be. You can start small, and even if you live in the middle of an urban jungle you can still find plenty of interesting wildlife to photograph. In this excellent video, wildlife photographer Roie Galitz shares his top 10 tips for beginning to shoot wildlife (with a camera obvs).

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Create a fine art HDR sea scape from start to finish

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Piers and jetties make wonderful subjects for long-exposure photography. It’s something about the lines leading you through the image and the perspective, combined with the poetic nature of an open body of water. But they aren’t always easy to shoot correctly, and sometimes you’ll need to shoot multiple exposures to get the result just right.

In this video, Gary Gough walks us through a shoot in Hartlepool, UK of the dilapidated skeleton of an old pier. He shows us how he shoots it and then edits it to create a beautiful fine art HDR seascape.

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How to clear sensor dust in Lightroom in multiple photos at once

Even if you rarely change your lenses, you’ll end up with some dust on your sensor. Naturally, it will be visible in your photos, and let’s face it, we normally see the sensor dust only when we’re already done shooting.

Thankfully, this can be resolved in post. Although it sounds like a tedious job to remove all those little specks of dust, there’s a neat trick that will speed it up immensely. Micael Widell shares it in his latest video, so let’s check it out, along with some bonus tips from me.

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Five tips to get the best video results from low budget 8-bit cameras

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We all have to start somewhere and for those who wish to learn how to shoot video, that usually means some pretty low-budget (and often old) equipment. Those newcomers are often teased on social media for not having the latest and greatest gear and made to feel bad about what they own, but don’t let those types of people get to you. You can do some great stuff with some very inexpensive equipment!

Sure, the older and low-budget gear may have some limitations that more expensive or newer gear might not, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get the shot. You just maybe have to work a little harder for it. And in this video, Nigel Barros walks us through his five gotcha mistakes that often trip up new filmmakers and how to avoid them to get the best video you can from low-budget cameras.

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Everything you ever needed to know about circular polarising filters

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I remember when I first started out in photography I found all the different types of filters to be a bit confusing. I honestly didn’t know my ND Grad filter from my UV filter. And I had no idea about when and why you might want to use a polarising filter. Of course, since then, I’ve studied and learnt a lot.

These days the post-processing options are so good that there are really only a couple of filters that are truly indispensable. One of these is the circular polarising filter. In this video, Christopher Frost walks you through exactly when, why and how to use one.

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Landscape photography is for everyone, no matter what your mobility

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Are you ever intimidated by those strapping young Insta-photographers that seem to travel the world climbing mountain after mountain? They seem to exist purely to seek out the most inhospitable environments to feed their impressive portfolios. Are you thinking that you can’t be a landscape photographer if you’re not able to do serious days of wilderness treks or at least get in some formidable day hikes to out-of-the-way locales?

Whether you’re unable or unwilling to walk a long way, it doesn’t matter and you shouldn’t let that get in the way of a good landscape photo opportunity. Some of Ansel Adam’s most famous photographs were actually taken just a stone’s throw from the road. With that in mind, in this video photographer, Mike Smith gives you some tips to capture stunning landscapes without having to exert yourself.

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